Tag: Burlesque

Summary: A girl (Christina Aguilara) leaves her small town and moves to LA to make a life. She finds an out-of-the-way burlesque club whose owner (Cher) in trouble and about to lose the club. Of course, the girl is awesome and saves the day.

Thoughts: This movie was billed as musical, which I think is false advertising. To me, a musical is a story that is progressed by having the characters sing songs in odd places to express their feelings about matters. It is not, as this movie is, a story about people who sing random songs on a stage. “The Music Man” is a musical: characters sing and dance in situations that are not normal about their feelings or to stir people up. “Burlesque”, to me, is not a musical: the only original songs are about working at a Burlesque club, sung on stage to patrons (save for one song completely randomly sung by Cher, the song that won a Golden Globe, which was on stage). Heck, “Coyote Ugly” had the same plot and just as many songs, the characters just didn’t sing them.

Other than that, the plot was cliche and predictable. The acting was merely OK, with Stanley Tucci outshining the rest of the singers-turned-actresses by a huge margin. Seeing the guy who played James the Bad Vampire in Twilight in another movie was pretty funny, as he looked like he wanted to eat all of the other characters. Cher was Cher, take that however you’d like, and Christina Aguilara was a surprisingly decent actress. Not leading lady material, but serviceable.

Overall: You’ve seen this movie several times already in other forms, and selling it this time as a musical doesn’t add anything.1/5